And suddenly it works.

Well, it looks like Nikolaus has mostly (or completely) resolved the power issues now.

While not 100% sure yet (more testing needs to be done), he was able to run a stresstest (100% CPU load) for 10 minutes - and then he manually did shut it down - no freeze so far!
Doing normal stuff, he let it run for a few hours and it didn't freeze as well.

Turns out it wasn't a hardware issue (yeeha!), but mostly just a not yet properly configured power management chip.
There are still a lot of other parameters to tweak, but at least we know that the hardware seems fine.

Nikolaus still has a few more tests to do to confirm the remaining hardware, but the list got REALLY short now!

What does that mean?
Well, he can now send me a set which I can assemble into the case (as soon as I got the remaining parts).
That means: The time to make videos of a real prototype can soon be made!
And when that happens.... well, it's time to start the preorders!

By the way, in case you didn't know:
The Pyra can charge the battery even when the system is switched off.
It even charges the battery when the CPU board is not even there - it's all handled by the charger chip.

That's something a few of you probably know

Okay, then a few more words about the heat:

As I saw some discussions about that in a thread, here are some informations:
Yes, the OMAP5 can get pretty hot. But in case you think that's only the case with the OMAP5: Nope.Almost every new CPU has that issue.

Simple: First, the tasks you do are usually not that demanding. You don't compile on your smartphone (though you might do that on the Pi or the Pyra), and most apps don't really stress the CPU a lot. You get occasional high peaks, but that doesn't raise the temperature a lot.
If you run something demanding (i.e. Drastic with HiRes Rendering), smartphones get pretty warm as well.

Well, and second: The CPU is being throttled when the temperature rises to lower the temperature again.

There's no magic SoC that doesn't produce heat when they're fully used. Yes, modern ones are a bit better and provide more CPU power before they get too hot but they will also heat up when 100% stressed.

So we're not a special case. That's pretty normal these days.

Okay, so much for the short, but pretty good news (at least in my opinion!)
See you soon!

Thanks for the newspost, I'm already excited for the videos! I didn't know about these things about the charger chip, sounds interesting, eventhough probably in most cases useless. But definitely nice to have.
The OMAP5 is sometimes looked at as a bad SoC, especially because of the A15s with relatively low efficiency, but after all it's still an ARM designed for mobile use and if we can trust those who already used it on development boards, it should even work ok without any heatspreader. So if you guys can pull of the use of the SD card slots as heatspreaders and distribute the heat over the mainboard, I'm sure it'll work absolutely fine.

Thanks for the newspost, I'm already excited for the videos! I didn't know about these things about the charger chip, sounds interesting, eventhough probably in most cases useless. But definitely nice to have.

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I don't know about that. While it isn't a huge deal I'm not a big fan of the Pandora needing to be on while charging. I usually forget, shutdown, plug it in, it boots back to the log in screen, then when it is done charging I have to log in just to turn around and shut it down...

PS would be nice if SZ 1.74 had the ability to shut down from the login screen for the reason above

This Charging whitout booting feature sounds pretty cool..
Also im looking forward for the Videos..
So when its time to preeorder, what do whe prepreorderers make?? Also preorder or is this allready done??

Obviously you probably don't have the details figured out yet, but do you have roughly some idea how time there would be between the time the preorders take place and when the first units are delivered ?